One of the delights of visiting South Africa, and the Cape area in particular, is the terrific wine made here. We spend a lot of time visiting vineyards and the great restaurants associated with them. We also enjoy searching out wine shops and found this wine in a local one. This is made by The Goats do Roam Wine Company and is unusual in that it's a blend of red and white grapes; the strong red Shiraz plus some white Viognier, both grapes which originate in the northern Rhone area of France, (known there as the Cote roti and the Cote du Rhone)
The label proclaims 'abundant with rich fruit and warm spices' and we agree. Cheers!

Some days we don’t do much, just hang around the pool and work on my tan. If we’re feeling really energetic, we go out for lunch. Today took us to the Boschendal Wine Estate, one of the Cape’s oldest dating back to 1685.

http://www.boschendal.com/

They do a tasty picnic laid out on white linen with a silver bucket for the wine and sparkling water. We started with Tartlets of smoked Franschhoek salmon trout, followed by Snoek pate and Cucumber Humus on a French baguette. Then we had cold roast beef, country ham and a very delicious smoked chicken with lemon and herb baby potato salad. The cheese here isn’t terrific (we do live in France, remember) but the chocolate brownies were great. We washed this down with some of the house Pavillion Blanc, a chardonnay/semillon blend perfect for picnics.

On the way home we stopped at another winery that looks terrific and has spectacular views so we booked lunch there for Friday. Stay tuned and we'll tell you all about that one.

Cheers!

Egyptian goose snacking on our front lawn.




















A table cloth on Table Mountain.

Could this be where ankle-biters originated?












These guys came by for a snack while we were swimming. Almost ready to roast!

This Week in Carlux is currently in sunny Gordon's Bay, near Cape Town, South Africa. Today we visited the African penguin colony at Betty's Bay where the sea air was strongly tinged with the scent of penguin guano.

We drove home past some spectacular coastal scenery, typical of this area.

We don't often have snow but sometimes there are attractive frosts.